Scale and Scope - human capital and the structure of regional export flows

Martin Andersson () and Sara Johansson ()
Additional contact information
Sara Johansson: CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology, Postal: CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

No 195, Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation from Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies

Abstract: This paper presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between human capital endowments and the structure of regional export flows. Since the development of each export product may be assumed to be associated with innovation activity, requiring human capital inputs, the core hypothesis tested in this paper is that cross-regional variations in endowments of human capital influence the extensive margin (number of export products) rather than the intensive margin (average export value per product). The hypothesis is tested in a cross-regional regression model, applied to aggregate and within-industry export flows from Swedish regions. The empirical results confirm the theoretical prediction that the response of regional export flows to cross-regional variations in human capital is an increase in the extensive margin. To the extent that the regional human capital endowment affects the intensive margin, the effect is a higher average price per export product.

Keywords: product differentiation; knowledge; human capital; accessibility; export diversity; extensive margin; economies of scale (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F14 R12 R32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-hrm, nep-int and nep-knm
Date: 2009-09-28
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://cesis.abe.kth.se/documents/CESISWP195.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0195

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation from Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies
Address: CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Martin Andersson ().